Skyscanner: Save to List

Save to List is the first feature developed off the back of Skyscanner 2025 vision. It is a cornerstone feature designed to enhance user experience and drive strategic growth. It addresses travelers' top unmet need—creating shortlists—while aligning with familiar behaviors from other platforms.

Role

Principle Design Manager

Year

2023-2024

Team

Daniel Gost | James Wesson

Context

Beyond its core benefits, Save to List fuels Skyscanner’s broader strategy by encouraging account creation, boosting marketing opt-ins, and enabling personalization. It also unlocks cross-product discovery, increasing awareness of Skyscanner’s full offering and supporting multi-vertical travel planning. Additionally, the feature generates valuable data insights, revealing user preferences and shaping future product development.

Strategic Value

The team developed a three-pronged strategy focused on:

1 / Drives Account Creation & Engagement

Natural prompt for account creation
Increases opt-in rates for marketing communications
Enables personalization through explicit preferences

2 / Enables Cross-Product Discovery

Creates opportunities for cross-selling
Increases awareness of full product offering
Supports multi-vertical travel planning

3 / Provides Data & Insights

Generates strong signals for personalization
Reveals user preferences and patterns
Informs product development

Save Q1 - Q2
MVP

First, we supported saving capabilities across all platforms. This comprehensive approach allowed us to begin building meaningful relationships with travelers from their initial interaction with our service.

Why It Mattered

Launching across all platforms, verticals, and search states expanded our reach by over 500%
It enabled travelers to bypass repetitive searches, creating a more efficient experience
Cross-platform saving allowed travelers to seamlessly transition between devices—searching on mobile and completing bookings on desktop
Implementing a consistent save functionality across our ecosystem established the foundation for enhanced trip planning experiences

Implementation Plan

Developed save functionality across all verticals and platforms
Integrated save capabilities throughout the user journey: combined results pages, pro-view interfaces, and booking panels
Enhanced saved flights with automatic price alerts, providing ongoing value

10%

increase in engagement in our overall inventory
(~207k daily)

54%

successfully logged in without friction

61%

increase in account creations as a result

(~123K daily)

211%

growth in price alerts with flight saves
(~147k daily)

28%

of new accounts agreed
to mar-comms

(~25K daily)

100%

we saw more than 100% increase in new opt-ins for our Lifecycle emails

Save Q2 - Q3
Enhanced features

We built upon our MVP by enhancing core save functionality, implementing key improvements to drive personalization and engagement. Our refined price intelligence algorithms delivered more accurate pricing data, seamlessly integrated with saved itineraries to enable informed booking decisions.

Our roadmap included:

Collaborative Sharing: Enabling users to share and receive saved items, establishing the foundation for collaborative trip planning
Grouping: Automatically organizing content by destination to simplify navigation
Contextual Monetization: Incorporating relevant recommendations and beginning to thoughtfully monetize the Saved list surface

Results

10% of searchers actively engaged with the share feature
3x higher booking conversion for users with saved items
43% increase in return visit rates across all platforms (compared to industry average of 27%)

Q4 & Beyond
VISION

Skyscanner’s long-term vision focuses on enhancing search, booking, and planning with smarter, more integrated features. Building on insights from earlier phases, Skyscanner will continue evolving its platform to enhance collaboration, personalization, and post-booking engagement. The transition from individual to collaborative planning will make trip organization seamless, while deeper personalization—driven by saved preferences—will ensure more relevant recommendations. Post-booking engagement will be expanded to provide ongoing value beyond the initial reservation. As these features develop, they will be refined based on data, performance metrics, and user feedback, ensuring Skyscanner remains a dynamic and responsive travel companion.

Key Features

Killer Combos: Offers travelers more flexibility by combining flights with stopovers in exciting cities—often for the same or lower price than a direct flight.
Collaborative Lists: Travelers can save, share, and compare trip ideas with friends and family, streamlining group planning.
Interactive Map: A visual tool that helps users explore saved locations, understand their destination layout, and navigate seamlessly before arrival.
Trip Comparison: Side-by-side comparison of saved trips enabling travelers to evaluate options based on price, duration, amenities, and other key factors.
Predictive Pricing: Advanced algorithm that forecasts future price changes for saved itineraries, helping travelers book at the optimal time.

Biggest opportunity

Lifetime Customer Value

Travel planning is an act of collage, not curation. If we give travellers a canvas, a base of operations, we can start to unlock the emotional, identity and meaningful value we’ve talked about in previous conversations.

If we create a container that captures all the artefacts that make up the travel experience, we can know our travellers better, serve them longer, and engage with them more effectively than anybody else.

We just need to give travellers an excuse to hang out in our store.